The fans of Carmelo appear to fear a repeat of the “LeBron scenario”. Essentially, a star player strings a franchise along until he finally leaves his team. This departure ultimately leaves a team much worse off.

For the Cavaliers, this scenario clearly played out. LeBron produced 27.2 wins – while averaging 29.2 points per game — for the Cavaliers last season. This mark led all NBA players. Such production would have been difficult to replace in a trade. So even if Cleveland knew of LeBron’s intentions and traded him last season, the Cavaliers would have probably been worse off.

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Will this same scenario play out in Denver? Carmelo Anthony scored 28.2 points per game for the Nuggets. But his overall production (again, as noted at Huffington Post) was far less than LeBron. This means that the Nuggets have actually been given a tremendous opportunity. Other NBA teams think Carmelo is a very productive player. After all – as often noted in this forum – scoring dominates player evaluations in the NBA. But since Melo really isn’t as productive as his scoring suggest, he can be traded to a team for players who actually are quite productive. In other words, Denver can actually use Melo to get better.

So here is my basic message for fans of the Nuggets. Don’t look with dismay on the possibility that Melo might depart. No, you should be hoping he doesn’t sign that extension. If he does, Denver is going to once again commit substantial payroll cap space to a player who is really not that productive. And building a championship team in Denver will just be harder.

- DJ

P.S. By the way, the next post will not mention Carmelo Anthony. We have two submissions — examining the Pacers and Rockets — that will appear very soon.